THE TRUE VALUE OF A PC IS MORE THAN ITS SPECS
I THOUGHT $699 WAS CHEAP. I was wrong. Several issues ago, we attempted to build a respectable computer without going above the $699 barrier, and that was already a feat in itself. But after much deliberation and wrangling, we decided that we could do even better: Try $599. The rules were simple. We had to reduce the price of the system, but not drastically have it take a performance hit. This was no easy task. Take it from me—I've never built a PC that was less than $1,000, even though I've tried. Its easy to go high-cost, but its a challenge to set a budget and stick with it.
Back in the day, I built a "home" PC that had an external fiber-channel RAID array, with a very expensive Adaptec fiber-channel host adapter. The array itself housed five Seagate Cheetah fiber-channel drives, which I think cost something along the lines of $800 per drive. Basically, it was excessive, and required a lot of maintenance to keep things running smoothly. But, to be honest, looking back. I don't think it actually improved my PC experience at all. In fact, all the setup, maintenance. and troubleshooting actually degraded my entire experience.
Building a simple system often gave me a better overall experience. if I recount all the times that I built my own machine. The more complicated the hardware setup, the more problems I had to deal with, and the more time I had to spend figuring things out when something went wrong. And things can and will go wrong. Its just the nature of the beast. Another thing that's worth considering is that components are so good these days. Even the value-ended offerings in the CPU and GPU categories are seriously powerful. You get a lot for your money, and we have to thank great strides in CPU and GPU architecture design for that. If you don't game much on your PC, or at all, your money goes even further. I'm certain our new $599 system will pummel the insane system I had back then, fiber-channel and all.
Looking at the whole ecosystem now, I think that the total user experience is more important than specifications alone. Now I build what I need, not necessarily what I want. I look at my computer use case a lot more carefully, even though my income today is much better than it was 15 years ago. Sure, it's fun to gawk at crazy specs, but one should weigh up all the factors. Most of the time, I'm using my desktop to work and do productive things. I don't game much at all. So, you can see how the ultra-budget system builds are attractive for me. Just in case I do play a game or two, though, I'll consider that GTX 1080 Ti—for safe measure.
Tuan Nguyen is Maximum PC's editor-in-chief, also known as "the pointy end of the stick." He's been writing, marketing, and raising hell in the tech industry for 20 years.